With an aim to improve delivery of tax payers’ services and bring in transparency, accountability and efficiency in the indirect tax administration, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), will cover all 93 commissionerates under a new software application called Automation of Central Excise and Service Tax (ACES).
It has already launched a pilot project in selected commissionerates or Large Tax Payer Unit (LTU) in the country which includes Bangalore, Coimbatore, Chennai (both LTU and commissionerate), Belapur (Mumbai) and Bhubaneswar-II (commissionerate).
“We have brought minor changes in the software used in ACES pilot project. We hope to cover the entire country with this software by 30 June 2009”, V Sridhar, member, CBEC said.
Sridhar, who was here to launch the ACES in Bhubaneswar-II commissionerate, told the media persons that the new system will be able to deliver tax payers services faster. It will also help to improve the internal control as a number of MIS reports can be generated.
Stating that it will take about 6 to 8 weeks to assess the response to the new system, he said, the response at Bangalore has been satisfactory with 100 percent e-filling of the returns.
On possible impact of the slowdown on the collections of Central excise, customs and service tax, Sridhar said, the collections were impacted post-September 2008. So the revised estimates for 2008-09 is projected at Rs 2,80,000 crore which is Rs 40,000 crore less than the original estimate of Rs 3,20,000 crore.The target in the revised estimates will be attained, he added.
CBEC has set up a Centralised Data Centre in New Delhi and disaster recovery site at Chennai. Wide Area Network (WAN) has been set up to connect offices with the Centralised Data Centre.
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The ACES will have application for Central excise assessees, service tax assessees, Central excise departmental officer and service tax department officers. Initially, Central excise registration (REG), Service tax registration, LTU registration, Central excise returns, Service tax return, claims, intimations and permissions (CLI) modules of the software will be available in Bhubaneswar-II commissionerate.
Other modules like provisional assessment (PRA), refunds, ER 7 return, export, dispute resolution and audit will be made available at a later stage. This commissionerate has jurisdiction over districts of Sundergarh, Keonjhar (except mauza Bamanipal), Sambalpur, Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Sonepur, Boudh, Baragarh, Bolangir and Nuapada.